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Author Archives for Institute for InterGroup Understanding

Many people who have read the Three Key Years book have asked me for a one or two page summary of the key points in language that can be helpful to new parents. The people who have made that request say the full book is a good teaching tool for parents, families, caregivers, community leaders, and educators — but it is not optimal as a...

We are all heavily influenced by our instinctive behaviors. All four InterGroup books explain that process in some detail. We have instincts to be maternal, paternal, territorial, hierarchical, and tribal that all influence our thoughts, behaviors, emotions, interpersonal and intergroup interactions, and cultural realities in every setting. The usual pattern for the world we live in is that we have a basic instinct that guides...

We can achieve a culture of Peace for America. We can — if we come together to be a people united by our values and our core beliefs — create an America that succeeds and thrives going into the challenging years that lie ahead. We can help all Americans have the opportunity that we all should have to achieve the American Dream. We can build...

The InterGroup Institute website launched this morning. It launched on 9/11 in honor of the horrible manifestation of InterGroup hatred and intergroup violence that happened on this day roughly 15 years ago. That event made it very clear to us all that evil behavior at a very primal level can be a very real part of our world. When people have their us/them instincts in...

Our basic instincts to divide the world into us and them and to do cruel and evil things to people we perceive to be “Them” can be seen in very ugly forms in both our street gangs and in the ISIS movement that is gathering membership and supporters in multiple settings. The books Primal Pathways, Cusp of Chaos, and The Art of InterGroup Peace all...

The most recent learning ability scores for Minnesota school children showed that gaps between white students and Hispanic, African American, and Native American children continue at unacceptable levels. Seventy percent of the white children are reading at age appropriate levels compared to less than 40 percent of the children from the other groups. Those gaps are not due to race or ethnicity or even the...

Intergroup trust can be increased when people in any setting work together in a clearly collaborative way toward the achievement of a common goal. To create intergroup peace in our communities, we need people in each of our communities to be working together in intentional ways toward common goals that unite us and give us better lives. We need to carefully select areas where we...

The relationship between minority status and being imprisoned is clear. So is the link between not being able to read and going to jail. Sixty percent of our prisoners — from all groups — either read poorly or cannot read at all. More than 85 percent of the children in the juvenile justice system in this country either read poorly or cannot read at all....

“People have been protesting police violence and law enforcement disparities in more than a dozen American cities. Significant numbers of people in a number of cities have a very low level of trust for the local police departments and people have been expressing their unhappiness with a number of demonstration, protests, and various public displays of non affection. Why is trust for the police so low...